Sunday, 2 March 2014

Nai Harvest - Rush

Single review by soul1@thesoundofconfusion.com

Quite how this pair have escaped us for so long is a bit baffling. Nai Harvest are a duo from Sheffield comprised of a guy called Ben and a guy called Lew. They've been releasing music since late 2011, with a debut album, 'Whatever', released last year. The music has been plentiful though, with another album's worth of material being released prior to that, and new EP 'Hold Open My Head' set for full release this week. Those of you who are already up to speed with the band will know that they released the EP's title-track as a single in December, and more recently have put out 'Rush', the second song on the record and our introduction to their music.

If we took the blindfold test, we' be thinking American. There's a distinct grungy, college-rock feel to this song, in fact you could throw in slacker-rock too. They've chosen to go for "indie, emo, punk", which works quite well apart from the whole emo part of the equation which doesn't match what we're hearing here. Perhaps that's more indicative of their past material. We can trot out the regular names like Sugar, Weezer, Pavement and so on, and that would be the short-cut to giving you an overview of the sound of 'Rush'. Making sure that the guitar sound is buzzing and constant totally detracts from the fact that there's only two of them. In fact, if we did the blindfold test again, we'd be thinking quartet. 'Rush' is a catchy number, and a song that leaves us with a back-catalogue that we intend to dip into.